A scary Monday that started with a plunge abroad reminiscent of 1987’s crash swept around the world and pummelled Wall Street with more steep losses, as fears worsened about a slowing US economy.
The S&P 500 dropped 3% for its worst day in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reeled by 1,033 points, or 2.6%, while the Nasdaq composite slid 3.4%.
The drops were the latest in a global sell-off that began last week. Japan’s Nikkei 225 helped begin Monday by plunging 12.4% for its worst day since the Black Monday crash of 1987.
It was the first chance for traders in Tokyo to react to Friday’s report showing US employers slowed their hiring last month by much more than economists expected.
Professional investors cautioned that some technical factors could be amplifying the action in markets, and that the drops may be overdone, but the losses were still neck-snapping.
South Korea’s Kospi index careened 8.8% lower, and bitcoin dropped below 54,000 dollars (£42,000) from more than 61,000 dollars (£48,000) on Friday.
Even gold, which has a reputation for offering safety during tumultuous times, slipped about 1%.
That is in part because traders began wondering if the damage has been so severe that the Federal Reserve will have to cut interest rates in an emergency meeting, before its next scheduled decision on September 18.
The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for the Fed, briefly sank below 3.70% during the morning from 3.88% late Friday and from 5% in April. It later recovered and pulled back to 3.89%.
“The Fed could ride in on a white horse to save the day with a big rate cut, but the case for an inter-meeting cut seems flimsy,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.
“Those are usually reserved for emergencies, like Covid, and an unemployment rate of 4.3% doesn’t really seem like an emergency.”
The Fed has been clear about the tightrope it began walking when it started hiking rates sharply in March 2022.
Being too aggressive would choke the economy, but going too soft would give inflation more oxygen and hurt everyone.
Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle sees a higher chance of a recession within the next 12 months after Friday’s jobs report.
But he still sees only a 25% probability of that, up from 15%, in part “because the data look fine overall” and he does not “see major financial imbalances”.
Some of Wall Street’s recent declines may simply be air coming out of a stock market that romped to dozens of all-time highs this year, in part on a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
Critics have been saying for a while that the stock market looked expensive after prices rose faster than corporate profits.
“Markets tend to move higher like they’re climbing stairs, and they go down like they’re falling out a window,” according to JJ Kinahan, chief executive of IG North America.
The only way for stocks to look less expensive is either for prices to fall or for their profits to strengthen. Expectations are still high for the latter, with growth for S&P 500 profits this past quarter looking to be the strongest since 2021.
Professional investors also pointed to the Bank of Japan’s move last week to raise its main interest rate from nearly zero.
Such a move helps boost the value of the Japanese yen, but it could also force traders to scramble out of deals where they borrowed money for virtually no cost in Japan and invested it elsewhere around the world.
Treasury yields also pared their losses on Monday after a report said growth for US services businesses was a touch stronger than expected.
Growth was led by arts, entertainment and recreation businesses, along with accommodations and food services, according to the Institute for Supply Management.
Still, stocks of companies whose profits are most closely tied to the economy’s strength took sharp losses on the fears about a slowdown.
The small companies in the Russell 2000 index dropped 3.3%, washing out what had been a revival for it and other beaten-down areas of the market.
Making things worse for Wall Street, Big Tech stocks tumbled as the market’s most popular trade for much of this year continued to unravel.
Apple, Nvidia and a handful of other Big Tech stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven” had propelled the S&P 500 to record after record this year, even as high interest rates weighed down much of the rest of the stock market.
But Big Tech’s momentum turned last month on worries investors had taken their prices too high and expectations for future growth are becoming too difficult to meet.
A set of underwhelming profit reports that began with updates from Tesla and Alphabet added to the pessimism and accelerated the declines.
Apple fell 4.8% Monday after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it had slashed its ownership stake in the iPhone maker.
Nvidia, the chip company that has become the poster child of Wall Street’s AI bonanza, fell even more, 6.4%.
Analysts cut their profit forecasts over the weekend for the company after a report from The Information said Nvidia’s new AI chip is delayed.
The recent selling has trimmed Nvidia’s gain for the year to nearly 103% from 170% in the middle of June.
Another Big Tech titan, Alphabet, fell 4.4% after a US judge ruled Google’s search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 160.23 points to 5,186.33. The Dow sank 1,033.99 to 38,703.27, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 576.08 to 16,200.08.
Worries outside corporate profits, interest rates and the economy are also weighing on the market.
The Israel-Hamas war may be worsening, which beyond its human toll could cause sharp swings for the price of oil. That is adding to broader worries about potential hotspots around the world, while upcoming US elections could further scramble things.
Wall Street has been concerned about how policies coming out of November could impact markets, but the sharp swings for stock prices could affect the election itself.
The threat of a recession is likely to put Vice President Kamala Harris on the defensive.
But slower growth could also further reduce inflation and force former president Donald Trump to change from his current focus on higher prices to outlining ways to revive the economy.
“It comes down to jobs,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist for LPL Financial. Jobs drive spending by US consumers, which in turn is the biggest part of the US economy.
“When we get to election day, the unemployment rate is going to be extremely important.”
